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No Vacation Planned For Warzycha

By: Adam Jardy

The Columbus Dispatch - November 07, 2012 11:04 AM

There is no vacation planned for Crew head coach Robert Warzycha. With the Crew out of playoffs
and set to conclude training Nov. 16, the team’s healthy players are going through the paces of
closing out the 2012 season.

For the coaching staff, however, there is much work to be done.

“It’s very important not only to scout the college teams but also we’re working on notifying and
bringing in guys from outside the country,” Warzycha said. “Also, the guys that maybe are playing
right now for other teams that might next year play for the Columbus Crew. You have a busy
offseason.

“Vacation? It’s nice to say vacation obviously but I would like to be working longer because of
the playoffs. We have to scout. That’s a part of the job. I like to go to the games and actually
see the players and potentially (future) players for the Columbus Crew.”

Technical director Brian Bliss told me last week that the Crew will not be making massive
changes to the roster, stating that typical attrition of about 30 percent is expected. Yesterday,
Warzycha said that does not mean the Crew will not be curtailing its searches for new players.

“I think we have to be as active as possible,” he said. “That doesn’t mean we’re going to trade
here and there and bring in this and that, but we have to know what we can get. If you know who you
can have, then you can make the decision whether you want to or not. There’s a lot of good players
over there and sometimes they are not available because of the price or because of their contract
but I think we are always trying to make the team better. If you find a new player you try to bring
him into the team.”

Warzycha said the Crew is not targeting specific countries because, “the ways the agencies are
operating right now, they have people everywhere. It’s not like it’s just an English agency. No,
they have affiliations in Switzerland or France or the U.S. or Japan or Australia. You never know.”&
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Before the Crew signed Federico Higuain as the third designated player in club history, Warzycha
traveled to his home country of Poland for about a week for the Euro 2012 tournament. While there,
he met with a player and the Crew eventually extended a contract offer to bring him in as the club’s
designated player.

Those talks ceased when the Crew saw it might be able to sign Higuain, and Warzycha said the
unnamed player is not on their radar.

“Our No. 1 priority was Higuain, so as soon as we brought him here then the other guy was not
available anymore,” the coach said. “If you want to bring somebody in, you have a window. A player
is not going to wait for you. If you don’t bring him here and agree with a contract, the player is
gone. We have to look for the next one. That’s why we brought (Jairo) Arrieta and Higuain and that’s
why we were looking for attacking players.”

A few new faces were training with the Crew yesterday, but Warzycha declined to name them. He
did say they were not any of the Crew’s top four “home-grown” player candidates – Wil Trapp
(Akron), Chad Barson (Akron), Matt Wiet (UCLA) and Justin Luthy (Boston College) – however.

“This time of year you’re going to have some kids, some players that you’re going to bring if
they are not playing for their other clubs just to look at them. Before we release the names, they’r
e basically college kids here.

Second-year player Aaron Horton did not practice as he continued to recover from having his
wisdom teeth removed Monday, Warzycha said. In addition, Milovan Mirosevic is expected now to be
full-go after an injury kept him out of the lineup for the last game of the season.

“He was doing warmup and possession today so probably he’s going to be full-in tomorrow, but we
didn’t let him play today,” the coach said.

The Crew will conduct exit interviews with its players next week, Warzycha said, and they will
focus solely on the season and not on contract situations.

"Exit meetings are just talking about the season and nothing else," he said. "It’s not talking
about whether somebody is coming back or not. It’s just talking about what we did right, what we
did wrong, what we need to improve on and what the players need to work on."